The Alaska Board of Fisheries is meeting in Ketchikan to consider changes to Southeast Alaska’s fisheries. The state regulatory group will take up herring proposals this week, and it could adopt changes to how the Sitka Sound Sac Roe herring fishery is managed, like lowering the maximum harvest level or closing certain areas to commercial fishing. But the board is meeting at a time when recent state data on herring has been called into question. 

Last year, the allowable herring harvest, or Guideline Harvest Level (GHL], in Sitka’s commercial herring fishery was set at a record-breaking high at just over 80,000 tons. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) manages the fishery and sets the harvest level based on its herring population projections for the year. But a report recently published by ADF&G now suggests the state overestimated last year’s mature herring population by almost double.

In retrospect, this means commercial seiners were given the opportunity to harvest around 40% of what was actually available. Due to market conditions, however, fishermen only harvested around 12,000 tons.

For some, the disparity in the data is again raising questions about the state’s management of the commercial fishery. Herring eggs are a traditional food highly valued by the Lingít people, and the Sitka Tribe of Alaska sued the state in 2018 over its management of the fishery. In a press release in January, a local advocacy group, the Herring Protectors, said the report calls into question the department’s methodology and said the situation underscores the need for reform, like lowering the harvest rate or adopting a model where a tribal government can co-manage fisheries with the state.  

In an email to KCAW, ADF&G area management biologist Aaron Dupuis said that the study was published by the department in December, though he was unsure of when it was listed to the Board of Fish’s website. Herring Protectors maintain that it wasn’t findable anywhere on the state’s website until after the comment deadline had passed.

KCAW reached out to state fisheries biologists for comment on the recent study and to confirm the time of its release to the public, but they were unavailable for an interview in preparation for the Board of Fish Meeting.